Coyote attacks 5-year-old child in San Francisco-area park

DUBLIN, Calif. (AP) - A 5-year-old girl was hospitalized after a coyote attacked her in a San Francisco Bay Area park, officials said.

The girl was walking with her family when a pack of five or six coyotes approached and one of them bit her. The girl’s family quickly intervened and the animals fled, park officials said.

The Dublin Hills Regional Park was closed to visitors after the child was attacked Wednesday, the East Bay Times reported.

The girl was taken to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

The park was closed to visitors while parks staff coordinates with California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials to locate, trap and remove the coyotes, parks spokesman Dave Mason said.

East Bay Regional Park District wildlife program manager Doug Bell said the majority of park-tracked coyote interactions are usually with dogs, and rare but occasional instances of small-dog attacks led officials to recommend on-leash wilderness hiking.

Whether increased human presence in parks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was a factor in the attack remained unclear, but Bell said that staff had stepped up patrols of park staging areas to note vehicle spacing and appropriate social distancing.

In San Francisco, where residents have been at home for more than two weeks because of a shelter-in-place order coyotes have been sighted walking the empty streets at all times of day.

Residents have been posting photos in social media of the coyotes’ sightings in parks, empty sidewalks and outside their homes, SFGate reported.